Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)
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I accept the Chairman is making an apology to the committee. Apart from distracting from the work of this committee, my view is that the apology should be made to those impacted by the tweet, rather to us. I was not going to comment on the issue but in the Chairman's explanation and in Deputy Carthy's contribution, whether it was a clumsy tweet or a strategic approach, as another member mentioned, a definite attempt was made to try to conflate actions which the army of the Republic of Ireland took in 1920 and the actions that an organisation of the same name took at Narrow Water. That is not new. It is a political difference the Chairman's party has with many others in the Dáil. It is also an attempt to suggest that for someone to be in favour of a united Ireland, it is enough to be anti-British. We know we need to do far more than that to create a shared island.

While I and many other members of the committee were quite reasonable when we were getting media requests yesterday, the irony is not lost on me that if any of us had been in the Chairman's position, we would probably be the subject of a pile-on. I do not draw my political tactics from that style of politics when I am in the wrong and I do not believe I should do it when other people are in the wrong. I object to the Twitter pile-on today in respect of the Ceann Comhairle. It was an attempt to open up a second line of defence and it was deplorable, especially when so many members of this committee have been so reasonable on this issue. Deputy Devlin put it well when he said that this is a political difference between the Chairman's party and others here. The Chairman has as much of a mandate as any other Deputy in this House. The matter is one between Sinn Féin and the Irish people, not the Committee of Public Accounts.